Stirring

Est.1999. One of the oldest continuously publishing journals on the web. Poetry / Fiction / Nonfiction / Reviews / Art.

[Stirring @StirringLit]

"...darkness as x, y
as where this is headed. Fall harder for
bad girl me & draw black nails through mystery.
Shut your starsick heart up."

– T. Dallas Saylor (@dallas_saylor)

https://t.co/acnVgXu7qu

[Stirring @StirringLit]

"They say there is only one rule:
The headlights must recede into the fog.
And if the sun is your headlight?
You are walking, then.
The fog recedes into your headlight."

– Nicholas Molbert (@nicholasmolbert)

https://t.co/TyBtR0WgiN

[Stirring @StirringLit]

"After five years, we let the dark
undress us still. To see each other
unclothed would be a concession.
You in your ragged sleep shirt
with holes at the underarms."

– Nicholas Molbert (@nicholasmolbert)

https://t.co/TyBtR0WgiN

[Stirring @StirringLit]

"I text 'The Moon!' and she knows this
means, 'Go outside!' She knows this means, 'The universe is
beautiful, isn’t it?' She knows this means, 'I miss you. I love you.'"

– Joseph Mills

https://t.co/IRJykR8bHu

[Stirring @StirringLit]

"...two women fought with coat hangers down at Filene’s Basement.
They’d grabbed the same dress from the tangle of satin
during the Running of the Brides sale: a back buttoned
ivory lace thing"

– Jennifer Martelli (@Martelli89)

https://t.co/B3K0ZG1QhO

[Stirring @StirringLit]

"...three greedy girl ghosts
full of shame, three women transformed into
deep gorges with a river like a blue snake
crawling, three women transformed
into three wolves, three gun-metal wolves
who gorged on three women."

– Jennifer Martelli (@Martelli89)

https://t.co/B3K0ZG1QhO

[Stirring @StirringLit]

"I am ready to party
with ten billion members
of my closest family

the moon’s red clay
the sky a lavender
making me uncomfortable"

– James Croal Jackson (@Jimjakk)

https://t.co/eToHIZDlql

[Stirring @StirringLit]

"You feed
the pinewood mason bee, take over my lawn, choke
out bergamot and blazing star, those native flowers
I cultivate in vain. There will always be more of you
than I can ever remove, and yet
you are my favorite weed to pull."

– KateLynn Hibbard

https://t.co/6tosKUtqrV

[Stirring @StirringLit]

"the gulls pooled in odd places, scraping their pale fingers on the cashmere lamp of the earth. Inside my lightning all the women smile, their furious lips hoarding spoons like a late martyr who dances in her one good dress..."

– KateLynn Hibbard

https://t.co/6tosKUtqrV

[Stirring @StirringLit]

"you can only perceive bleary, wheat fields blurred
by high-speed, distance. The landscape gone
gold, the way you used to picture it: egg yolk,
amber, honeycomb… that is, once-you, the figment

thick with wistfulness."

– Violeta Garcia-Mendoza

https://t.co/N9yGzGrPf2

[Stirring @StirringLit]

"Blame the fog. In another life, I might
have been the veil scraping against

the corners of a sooted city or the slice
of lamplight or the galloping black."

– Violeta Garcia-Mendoza

https://t.co/N9yGzGrPf2

[Stirring @StirringLit]

"To kill a lionfish in the Western Atlantic
is to save a snapper, grouper, someone's legitimate dinner.
Is to manage the species’ insatiable appetite,
rare as sashimi. Is to mitigate an unfolding tragedy."

– Sarah Carey (@SayCarey1)

https://t.co/AAr31FSoAD

[Stirring @StirringLit]

A big congratulations to contributor @AnnaLauraReeve for winning the Beloit Poetry Journal's Adrienne Rich award! Check out her piece in Stirring! And once again, amazing work!

https://t.co/ICBZTDrkZz

[Stirring @StirringLit]

“I plug my ears with headphones
and walk myself to the woods, nearly trotting
as I pass blackened trunks, step over thin shoots
of green, move in and out of shadow. She speaks
and my breath slows.”
-Angie Minkin
https://t.co/OG3F6xnb6e

[Stirring @StirringLit]

“so to this day I can’t eat fish
without first shredding it,
searching for what may not be there,
still hearing in my father’s caution
not quite fear,
almost love.” -Diane Leblanc
https://t.co/Tzp1h8Mozf

[Stirring @StirringLit]

“I had imagined doing it myself. So I could see
the draw. Like bobbing for apples in a bucket
of napalm, letting a lava flow envelope
my body in pyroclastic pudding,
or pressing the heat-shimmered surface
of a skillet to my forehead.”
- Joshua Jones
https://t.co/gopdjeU1GN

[Stirring @StirringLit]

“Once, the seventh grader Ann
left her place in line and led me
into the brush behind the store.”
-Ryler Dustin
https://t.co/c6ctkgIo4A

[Stirring @StirringLit]

“Not grace, but a drawn and quartered kind of love
that loves you at the altar even as you leave.
You loved me
or you love me.“
-Jill Crammond
https://t.co/DSLXgeWV3b

[Stirring @StirringLit]

“my grandfather was born with his palm threaded to his
shirt pocket, pledging himself to a nation
only national for its suffering.”
- Sam Baker
https://t.co/KNWcrywrma

[Stirring @StirringLit]

“and the No Trespassing signs went up | along with lectures from our mothers | when the weeds grew over the signs | we ventured back in for hide and seek” - Allison Thorpe

https://t.co/pyDvvpFTkU